“I’m not ready! Can’t I have a couple fucking weeks to figure this shit out! You can’t expect me to have my world flipped by my father, then flipped again by you and to be open to whatever it isyouwant!”
Great. Now I was a shrew on top of being a bitch.
He smiled then. Which was usually my favorite thing. Especially when I made it happen.
“You’re right. This is completely unfair of me. But I have to do it. It’s the only way I can survive you, Kate. It’s like you said. You’re made of scrappy stuff. You’ll get through this. Your father, me. All of it. I won’t.”
“So it’s all or nothing with you and that’s it.”
He stood then and came toward me. He leaned over the bed, his arms on either side of my face.
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m sorry, Kate. Never been in love before so I didn’t know how this would feel.”
“Love! You don’t even know if it’s real,” I shouted at him. “Trust me, I know. Real is a fucking illusion.”
He put his hand on my chest. “You feel that? Inside? That’s as real as it gets. Your body can’t fake that feeling. You just don’t trust it anymore, and that lack of faith is shredding me. Go home, Kate. Wherever that’s going to be for you. It just can’t be here.”
“I hate you! In this moment, right here, right now, I hate you! Because you won’t even give me a chance.”
He kissed me then. Hard deep. His tongue thrusting against mine, taking everything. Like he was trying to pull out all those feelings he knew were inside my body so that I wouldn’t feel them anymore when he left.
He pulled away and I tugged on his shoulders to keep him with me. As if I could defeat his physical strength over me by sheer will. I couldn’t.
“Goodbye, Kate.”
“Fuck you, Jack!”
I heard the front door slam close. Heard his truck engine start and him peel away. I pulled the blanket over my head then I didn’t hear anything at all except my own pathetic sobs.
16
Hope’s Point
Jackson
“Hey, Daniels, you’re back.” Angel greeted me with a slap on the back, surprised, I imagined, to see me at Bud’s place. I’d wanted to drink before heading to camp.
Check that. I wanted to be drunk before heading to camp.
“Thought you were going to be gone for longer.”
“Changed my mind.” I sipped my whiskey and thought it was good he was here. I could get shitfaced drunk now and Eli could shuttle my ass to the camp. I thought of the number of shots it was going to make me forget last night. I figured Bud probably didn’t have that much whiskey.
“Mind if I join you?”
I grunted. He sat next to me.
“Where’s Shelby?” I asked.
This time it was sour grapes. I wanted to hear about how happy they were so I could sneer at them. Tell them they were fools to believe in something as silly and fleeting as love.
I was pathetic.
“Taking care of Junior. Get this. Now that she’s working full-time as a nanny for Eve and Zeke, they’ve decided they can go back to work. Together. What the fuck do you think those two consider work?”
“I wouldn’t ask. I would tell Shelby not to ask, either. Especially now she’s living with them.”
“Oh, she’s not in the house with them. Apparently, Zeke’s got freaking cabins all over this territory. There’s one not too far from the house he built, and get this, it’s got an underground tunnel from her cabin to the main house. He says it’s so she doesn’t have to worry about the elements, but I don’t know, man. When the hell did he get the equipment up here to build that?”
